The Tribes of Albania: History, Society and Culture

by Robert Elsie

Northern Albania and Montenegro are the only regions in Europe to have retained a true tribal society up to the mid-twentieth century. This book provides the first scholarly investigation of this tribal society, a pioneer work that offers a detailed survey of all the major Albanian-speaking tribes in Albania, Montenegro and Kosovo. Robert Elsie provides comprehensive material on the 69 different tribes, including data on their locations, religious affiliations, tribal structures and relations, population statistics, tribal folklore, legends and history. Also included are excerpts from the works of prominent nineteenth and early-twentieth century writers, such as Edith Durham and Johann Georg von Hahn, who travelled through the tribal regions, as well as short biographies on prominent figures linked to the tribes. As the first book of its kind, The Tribes of Albania will be of interest to scholars and students of the Balkans, of southeastern European anthropology, ethnography and history.

‘The tribal system of northern Albania is one of the most fascinating aspects of a very distinctive part of Europe. Over hundreds of years, when their territory was under Ottoman rule but seldom fully under Ottoman control, these tribes provided a basis for social identity, local justice and military action. So cohesive were they that the unity of a tribe could easily survive the conversion of one part of it to Islam. Anyone who studies the history of these people will encounter tribal names and tribal identities at every step; and yet, until now, there has never been a general work gathering all the scattered information about them that survives in sources of many different kinds. The Tribes of Albania will be an indispensable and authoritative work of reference. There are few people in the world who could have written such a work; absolutely no one could have done it as well as Robert Elsie, whose knowledge of this material is unparalleled.’ -

Sir Noel Malcolm, Senior Research Fellow, All Souls College, University of Oxford

Genres: History

383 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 24, 2015

About the author

Elsie was a writer, translator, interpreter and specialist in Albanian studies. He studied at the University of British Columbia, graduating in 1972 with a diploma in Classical Studies and Linguistics. In the following years, he continued his post-graduate studies at the Free University of Berlin, at the École Pratique des Hautes Études and at the University of Paris IV: Paris-Sorbonne, at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies in Ireland, and at the University of Bonn, where he finished his doctorate on Linguistics and Celtic Studies in 1978 at the Linguistics Institute.

From 1978 on, Elsie visited Albania several times with a group of students and professors from the University of Bonn. For several years, he also attended the International Seminar on Albanian Language, Literature and Culture, held in Prishtina, Kosovo. From 1982 to 1987, he worked for the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Bonn, and from 2002 to 2013 for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, in particular as an interpreter for several noted cases including the trial of Slobodan Milošević.

As a translator Robert Elsie offers the reader “a selection of songs from the best known cycle of Albanian epic verse”.

Reviews

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was raised by my maternal grandparents. My grandfather's grandparents came here from Hungary and Czechoslovakia on his mom's side and from Ireland on his dad's side. My grandma's parents came here from Croatia and Kosovo respectively. Her mother's side had Albanian Kosovar ancestry and they came here at the time the Serbs invaded Kosovo during the First Balkan War in 1912. At that time true tribal societies still existed in Northern Albania and Montenegro.

When my great-great grandmother came to the United States she still wore traditional Albanian Kosovar dress and the customs of the old country were not easily shed at a time when full assimilation was the expectation and the norm. The foods, music and customs of the old country carried over somewhat into the new and were shed little by little. At the time they left in 1912 there existed in their small village a Catholic church which held mass infrequently and a mosque. While my family came from primarily Catholic tribes (with some Muslim members), other tribes were exclusively Muslim and others were quite mixed.

Robert Elsie's The Tribes of Albania: History, Society and Culture is not filled with rich prose, unlike the writings of British anthropologist Edith Durham, who is cited in this work at length, and is not completely objective, though he does try to be. He often shows bias against the Turks and the Communists, but this can be overlooked, because Elsie has really composed an impressive encyclopedic work of reference that charts the history, customs and legendry of the Northern Albanian tribes.

A Canadian of German descent, Elsie, like Durham before him, fell in love with Albania, its people and its culture. And the Albanians likewise felt a strong mutual respect and admiration for him. When Elsie died in 2017, his body was laid for viewing in Tirana for scholars, politicians and others from Albania, Northern Macedonia, and Kosovo to pay their respects and he was laid to rest in the village of Theth, as per his wishes. While Durham was buried in England, she had a strong affinity for Albania and its peoples and they likewise considered her somewhat of a national heroine.

When one reads the travel accounts of Edith Durham versus those of other European explorers and geographers who traveled to Albania, one senses that she had not only a strong curiosity, but an equally strong respect for the people and their cultures, something lacking in the accounts of many of the male writers who traveled in the region before her or around the same time. Some of these male writers described Northern Albania as un-European, the people as "savages" and "troglodytes," comparing the mourning cries of the women to the sounds of "wild animals." The terrain was described as exotic, "thorny" and filled with "spiny plants" and exotic vegetation like pomegranate trees and olive trees, while often also making note of the pride of the people and their generosity. Many accounts by Durham and others tell of a people who would sooner starve than see a visitor inadequately sated.

While the uncivilized Albanians lacked the ballet and opera that make for a civilized nation, they also lacked many laws and some tribes even at the turn of the last century were still living in caves (quite literally). It was certainly anarchistic compared to other parts of Europe, with blood feuds very common, and with many a man said to have a rifle, but no shoes or shirt on his back. The tribes were all traced paternally and it is said that all Albanians, if they were able to do so, would find their heritage going back to the same 20 or so common ancestors.

Because they were seen as "wild" and "uncivilized", many Germans and Englishmen were able to other them quite easily and see them as different, although existing on the same continent. They were to the "civilized" Europeans who traveled there not so very different from the Africans and Asians who they had so effortlessly othered before them, making it simple for me to draw comparisons between this work and Edward Said's Orientalism, which I was reading concurrently with this work.

Similarly, I was able to draw comparisons with this book and both the writing style and ideas presented in Nur Masalha's Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History. Masalha goes to great length to debunk the Zionist myth that Palestine did not exist before the Romans, showing that it had many names, including Peleset, Palashtu/Palastu, etc. Similarly, many of the tribal regions of Albania found their place names radically changed over a period of several hundred years depending on who was writing their history, be it an Italian, a Frenchman or someone else. Much like in Said's work, the important thing was that it was a civilized European doing the naming and telling the story of the uncivilized group.

While I doubt I will read this particular work again, I find great value in it as a work of reference, perhaps only of interest to scholars and students of the Balkans and those of Balkan descent. It has sparked in me a desire to read more about the culture and the region, to dive further into the prolific writings of Elsie and more so into the rich and beautiful prose of Edith Durham. If only because of my family tree, combined with the current events that have so captured my passions, this work has been one that has given me much to think about and is one that will stay with me for a very long time to come.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book if you're curious about or have some connection to the topic, though perhaps a bit boring if you do not. The author does a good job of compiling past writings concerning the tribes of northern Albania, however, he does not contribute any firsthand research, he does not talk to anyone from these tribes/clans/families about their history. As a result, the information from the past sources appears to be mistaken, outdated, and, at times, contradictory. Nonetheless, the compilation is valuable to parse out truth based on the previous writers' experiences and known family history.

[Morrys · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting book!